Overgrown Hedges/Branches

Updates

• A Highway Officer will carry out an initial assessment of the tree, emergency issues will be corrected or made safe at the time of the inspection, if reasonably practicable to do so. In this context, making safe may constitute displaying warning notices, coning‐off or fencing‐off to protect the public from the tree or other suitable action.

  If the inspection team cannot make safe the defect at the time of inspection, then they will instigate the relevant emergency call procedures to ensure appropriate resources are mobilised to make the tree safe. Highway Officers are not qualified as tree experts and in some cases they may need to arrange for a tree surgeon to visit the site and carry out a survey on the tree which can take up to 12 weeks.

  There may also be occasions when the issue reported will be classified as a minor defect and does not pose any risk to either the safety or the integrity of the highway, these are called minimum recording levels as specified in our Highways Safety Inspection Policy, in these cases no action will be taken.

  We do not prune or remove council owned trees to improve natural light for a private property (including obstruction of solar panels). If you wish to carry out any work on a tree, you must first check the tree is not protected before any work is started. How to find out if a tree has a Tree Preservation Order (TPO) in Buckinghamshire.

  Posted by Buckinghamshire Council at 10:54, Monday 20 July 2026

• Update

  We have investigated the issue reported and found that it is on private land. We have written to the landowner using our powers under the Highways Act 1980, in an attempt to resolve the issue.
  
  Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

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  Regards
  Buckinghamshire Highways

  State changed to: Closed

  Posted by Buckinghamshire Council at 20:39, Monday 3 August 2026